When Donald J. Trump steps onto the stage in West Palm Beach on the night of November 6th, pushes the curtain aside, positions himself somewhat tiredly in front of his family and the flags, as he smiles and takes a breath and finally begins to claim victory announce, a comeback is coming to a close, as breathtaking as it is frightening – one the United States has not seen in 248 years.
Never before has a previously defeated president come back like this. No convicted criminal ever moved into the White House. Never before has an American politician created a movement with such force; she would eventually lead him to such power.
Revenge as a leitmotif
On that day, Trump not only won the presidential election. His Republicans won the Senate. They defended the House of Representatives with great certainty. The Supreme Court is already in the hands of ultra-conservative judges who have de facto guaranteed Trump impunity. If Trump assumes the presidency again in January, he will have a free hand. For him that means: revenge.
Revenge is a leitmotif in Donald Trump’s life. To his political opponents, especially Joe Biden. To critics from our own ranks such as the renegade Liz Cheney. Of prosecutors who dared to charge him. Of all the “enemies within,” as he calls them, which he wants to fight with soldiers if necessary.
Trump’s return cements the power of his “Make America Great Again” message. Voters have accepted his dystopia of a destroyed country as their reality. They believed him when he spoke of the United States as a “third world country” where crime was rampant and migrants killed and raped and ate pets with impunity. And they believed him that he was the only hope for the country. “If you vote for me, we have a golden future ahead of us,” he had drummed into his followers again and again. What drove millions of Americans to place this power in his lap? And how dangerous is an irritable, narcissistic, instinctive politician when a nuclear strike is part of his personal arsenal?
